ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Discourses contained in the three last volumes of the present edition, with the exception of the Appendix, were first published in the year 1744, with the following title:

“Five additional Volumes of Sermons preached upon several Occasions. By Robert South, D.D. late Prebendary of Westminster, and Canon of Christ-Church, Oxon. Now first printed from the Author’s Manuscripts. With the chief Heads of the Sermons prefixed to each Volume: and a general Index of the principal Matters. London: printed for Charles Bathurst, opposite St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet-Street. M.DCC.XLIV.”

The editor is said to have been Dr. William King, Principal of St. Mary Hall in the University of Oxford. See Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. II. p. 608.

These Sermons do not appear to have been prepared or even intended for the press by the author, from whose rough drafts they were evidently printed in so careless and incorrect a manner, as in many passages to be absolutely unintelligible. In the present edition it has been deemed proper to have recourse occasionally to conjectural emendation of the ivtext, in preparing which considerable use has been made of a copy bequeathed to the Bodleian Library by Charles Godwyn, B.D. in which many of the errors are corrected in Mr. Godwyn’s own hand. But in all cases, in which an obvious and almost certain correction did not present itself, the original edition has been followed without alteration. A list of the words or passages corrected is subjoined to each volume.